Dakota Johnson Opens Up About Her ‘Psychotic’ Experience Of Filming Fifty Shades, Says ‘If I Had Known…’

Fifty Shades of Grey actor Dakota Johnson, nearly seven years after the first film from the franchise debuted, has opened up about shooting it and admitted that she hasn’t “been able to talk about this truthfully ever.”

According to E! News, she recently told Vanity Fair, “I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making.”

Speaking about the issues faced by her, she called it a “combo” between the studio, and the director but mostly the author behind the series. “She had a lot of creative control, all day, every day, and she just demanded that certain things happen,” Dakota recalled, adding, “There were parts of the books that just wouldn’t work in a movie, like the inner monologue, which was at times incredibly cheesy. It wouldn’t work to say out loud. It was always a battle. Always.”

Dakota explained that things got even tricker after Charlie Hunnam bowed out (he was ultimately replaced by Jamie Dornan), leading EL James to actually scrap the original script. “We’d do the takes of the movie that Erika wanted to make, and then we would do the takes of the movie that we wanted to make,” the actress, who was 23 at the time, noted. She admitted, “If I had known at the time that’s what it was going to be like, I don’t think anyone would’ve done it. It would’ve been like, ‘Oh, this is psychotic.’ But no, I don’t regret it.”

However, now Dakota is fine with the author. “Erika is a very nice woman, and she was always kind to me. And I am grateful she wanted me to be in those movies,” she added, as per E! News.